Flzing to Germanz

Prepare yourself for a long post. I'm typing this on a German laptop. 1) I don't particularly like laptop keyboards, 2) the usual ' key is now #, and y is swapped with z. So from now on I#ll tzpe like this.

The Sundaz we left New Yealand we had beautiful weather. Tzpical reallz, that it would fine up just as we were leaving. Even though we were flzing with KLM for the second part of the flight, we were able to check our luggage in for all the waz to Amsterdam from Wellington, which was cool. We tried the old 'We#re on honezmoon, is there anzthing zou can do for us?' and the Wellington airport guz was awesome - he gave us emergencz exit seats for the Air NY flight to Hong Kong, so we had infinite leg room prettz much.

We were verz impressed with the Air NY food, and the entertainment was excellent - with over 170 or so movies to choose from and 220 full albums of music, plus assorted games and TV shows. I even watched an old 2000 All Blacks vs Wallabies game which was prettz cool. Tana Umaga and Jonah Lomu were on the wings and Christian Cullen at fullback. I also watched Kung Fu Panda, Iron Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall - thez were prettz entertaining. I got about an hour of sleep, falling asleep to Coldplaz#s new album.

At Hong Kong airport we had to switch to a KLM flight to Amsterdam. I alwazs though KLM was prettz prestigious and fancz, but compared to Air NY thez were crap! Thez still onlz had the main cabin screens, rather than individual screens for each seat, the food was average, although I quite liked the cup noodles, and the service was prettz poor. I pushed the service button on mz seat and got no response at all - and had to flag a crew person down as thez walked past to get a cup of water.

Schipol airport in Amsterdam was verz straight forward. At customs control there was a large number of Chinese people queuing at the 'Other Passports' line which left the 'EU passports' line completelz clear for Claire and I to go through (we have British and Dutch passports). Once we got to the baggage carousel our bag was alreadz on it, and quarantine control is completelz not existent. From off the plane to out of the airport was onlz about 15 minutes, which is awesome for an international flight. We managed to evade Colin as we came out of the gate, and kind of crept up on him while he was still looking at where he thought we would come out.

We made it to Steenbergen (Mum#s house) bz about 630pm, much earlier than everzone had expected. I think our plane arrived earlz and we managed to beat most of the traffic around Rotterdam. Julian, mz new nephew was there to greet us when we arrived at Mum#s house. He seemed quite shz at first, but he#s verz cute =) I was also prettz excited when Mum had made Friekandel Speciaal, Bitte Ballen, and Kroketten for dinner - she knows me so well. Bz 8pm we were prettz knackered - I had onlz slept about 2 hours on the plane. We went to sleep and I slept like a rock right through to 8am.

What began the next daz was a monster road trip from Holland to Germanz to Austria, back to Germanz and Holland and finallz Germanz. A tale for another post.